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A COREESPONfifflCE ^£i_! 



BETWEEN THE! 



HON. JAMES BROOKS, 



OF nSIE'W" ■YORK:, 



AND THE 



HON. REVERDY JOHNSON, 



OF B-A.LXII^OR,E, 



^tkte of tl|e CotLqtf y 



J/ie TFa?/ ^0 Avert the Peril which threatens it. 



BALTIMORE: 

Printed at The Sln Book and Job Office. 

1 873 



A CORRESPONDENCE 



BEIWEEN THE 



HON. JAMES BROOKS, 



OF UE-W -YOIiK:, 



HON. REVERDY JOHNSON, 



OF B-A.LTI]S/rOR.E, 



:^tkte of tl)e Country 



The Way to Avert the Peril which threatens it. 



BALTIMORE: 
Printed at the Si'n Book anu Joh Office 

1873. 



^, 






New York, Jtme \8th, 1872. 

My Dear Sir — It is a o;ood old custom, as old as the days 
of the Roman Republic, to ask from men, distinguished in 
public life, as you have been, and are, what is best for the 
Republic, or, what it is best to do to guard it from detri- 
ment ? You and I were so long in public life together, 
and have so often acted together, that I feel anxious to 
know where you are now in the apparently novel position 
that the forthcoming nomination of Greeley and Brown at 
Baltimore will place us ; and I am the more anxio.us, be- 
cause I have already published my own opinion, which will 
be strengthened if fortified by yours. 

Yours, truly, 

JAMES BROOKS. 



Baltimore, July 15, 1872. 

My Dear Sir— Yonr letter of the 18th of June was duly 
received. The delay in answering it I do not now regret, 
as what has since occurred will enable me to do so proba- 
bly to more advantage than I could have done before. 
The question with the people now is — which of the two will 
they have for their next President, U. S. Grant or Horace 
Greeley? The former, during the past three years, in the 
judgment of all impartial men, has proved his utter unfit- 
ness for the office ; the latter, during a period of more 
than thirty years, as the editor of a leading journal, has 
proved himself, in the judgment of all impartial and com- 
petent men, to be a man of extraordinary ability, perfect 
patriotism, and incorruptible integrity. 

Has not General Grant demonstrated his unfitness for the 
Presidency? His election to it in '68 was owing to the 
confidence the people reposed in him for what they believed 
he possessed — good sense — and because of their gratitude 
for his military services during the war. In his good 
sense, with the experience of the last three years, it seems 
to me impossible that confidence can now be placed. His 
whole career as President has been full of blunders, to use 
no milder term. A few instances will establish this state- 
ment : 

1. His selection of his first Cabinet was made without 
consultation with any honest and experienced friend, and 
without regard to merit. He nominated as the head of the 
Treasury a highly respectable merchant of New York, in 
ignorance of the fact that by the 8th section of the Act of the 
2d of September, 1789, such an appointment is expressly pro- 
hibited, and this upon grounds of the clearest policy — the 
provision being that no person concerned in trade, directly 
or indirectly, is eligible to any office created by that Act ; 



6 

ami after finding his error, he foolishly requested Congress 
to modify the provision so as to enable him to make the 
appointment. In this he was properly foiled, although 
his friends constituted a large majority of both Houses. 
In the appointments he actually made, he seems not to 
have been influenced by any regard to the fitness of his 
appointees, but, in many instances, by a wish to show his 
gratitude for valuable presents received. 

2. His selection of his relatives for high* and important 
trusts, at home and abroad, obviously without ascertain- 
ing whether they were fit, and his refusal to remove many 
of them, after their unfitness had been pa,infully exhibited. 

3. His negotiation for the annexation of the Dominican 
Republic, through no Minister selecttd with the approval 
of the Senate, and his undignified lobbying with Senators 
to procure its ratification ; and his impertinent and insult- 
ing message to Congress, after the treaty was rejected, in 
which he designated the rejection as an act of '■' foUijJ" 
His usurpation of the war power in threatening Hayti, 
having the means at hand of making good his threat if they 
continued their hostilities against Dominica, and doing 
this not only whilst the treaty was under consideration by 
the Senate, but after they had rejected it. 

4. His open and shameless use of his power of patronage 
to support his personal administration and to secure a re- 
election. And with this view, not content with his first 
appointments, removing them and making others, not be- 
cause the legal duties of the first were not properly perr 
formed, but because they had not proved themselves as 
able to serve him as fully as he desired. 

5. His compelling Secretary Cox, a gentleman of abil- 
ity, who faithfully served his country during the war as a 
general ofiicer, and who was administering the Interior 
Department to the satisfaction of the country, to resign, 
because he had refused to tolerate the assessment upon the 
salaries of his clerks for party purposes, thereby counten- 



aiicing the legality and propriety of such assessments. 
No greater violation of duty could be perpetrated. The 
official salaries are of course paid out of the public trea- 
sury. To compel the officer to give a portion of it as a 
fund for electioneering purposes is, in fact, using the pub- 
lic funds to that end. And in this instance the object of 
these assessments was, and continues to be, to secure the 
re-election of General Grant, and the election of his party 
friends to Congress. 

6. His not only permitting, but virtually ordering, the 
members of his Cabinet, and the Bureau officers to canvas 
the States where elections have been or may be depending, 
in his behalf — thus seriously interfering with the public 
business which they alone were appointed to attend to, 
and for which alone they are paid. 

7. In not only not disapproving of the Acts of Congress 
known as the Enforcement Acts of 1870-'71, but in reck- 
lessly carrying them out by means of the military. And, 
although the condition of things alleged as an excuse for 
these laws no longer existed, and quiet prevailed in the 
two Carolinas, not an arm being raised against the autho- 
rity of the General Government or of either of the State 
Governments, and the like quiet existing in the other 
Southern States, his attempt to obtain, through Congress, 
until after the coming Presidential election, the continu- 
ance of those laws. No sensible man can doubt his mo- 
tives in this attempt. It was evidently to secure the 
electoral votes of those States, either by alarming the 
voters with the dread of military interference, or by 
resorting to such interference, if that should be found 
necessary. 

8. By his utter disregard of the rights of the States and 
of the people. By holding the latter still as enemies, and 
under this pretence continuing the military occupation of 
some of the States, and not interfering in any degree with 
the unconstitutional, reckless and corrupt governments 



8 

which from the first to the present time have plundered 
those States, involving them in almost hopeless bank- 
ruptcy. 

9. His management of our Foreign Relations. He has, 
it is gaid, converted the Russian Government from a warm 
friend to a cold one by the manner in which he treated the 
eldest son of the Emperor whilst, by the order of his father, 
as a mark of the latter's esteem and regard, he visited the 
President. His continuing, as our representative at Den- 
mark, a brother-in-law who read a dispatch relative to the 
same Government in the presence of its Minister which 
was so oifonsive as to force that gentleman to leave the 
room ; and his having failed not only not to remove our 
representative, but not even to reprimand him. His hav- 
ing known or having failed to know that our Government 
was selling arms to France during the late war between 
that Government and Prussia, and, when the then Prus- 
sian Minister, whose long residence in that capacity among 
us, and whose steady friendship during our war so endeared 
him to all who had a knowledge of his services and char- 
acter, addressed a polite note of inquiry in regard to it to 
the State Department, received, it is said, and I have- 
reason to believe with truth, a very rude and offensive 
reply from one of the assistant secretaries, and instead of 
rebuking the latter, he has since conferred upon him a 
most important trust in the discharge of which he is now in 
Geneva. This having been discovered by the Emperor of 
Germany, it has there arrested tliat current of friendly 
feeling which did us so much service during our war. 

His management of the Alabama Claims under the 
Washington Treaty ; his permitting a demand to be pre- 
sented for consequential damages to the Board of Arbitra- 
tors at Geneva when he must have known tdat the British 
Commissioners in tlie negotiation of that Treaty never sup- 
posed tliat such a claim was embraced by it ; and that 
they had good reason for so supposing irrespective of the 



words of the Treaty. And when he found that, if perse- 
vered in, the Treaty would be a failure, his ridiculous blun- 
dering in his efforts to avert it, culminating in that most 
ridiculous and absurd of all, his having the Arbitrators 
informed that he never expected any pecuniary compensa- 
tion, but only wanted the claim passed upon by them, 
when, if he and his advisors had not been utterly stupid, 
they would have known that the Board had no authority 
to make any award in favor of the United States except an 
award for money — thus accomplishing his object, the safety 
of the Treaty, by being told by the Arbitrators that this 
claim as thus explained was not within the Treaty or within 
their jurisdiction. It is unfortunately but too true that his 
conduct in this respect from the moment that the difficulty 
presented itself, to the period when it was removed in the 
way just stated, has but served to impair our character 
abroad and mortify us at home in making the world, at 
one time, believe that we were a nation of sharpers, and 
at another, a nation of blockheads. 

10. His conduct, and the conduct of the party in Con- 
gress and out of it, by whom he is supported, in extending 
the powers of the Greneral vTOvernment beyond those dele- 
gated, in direct antagonism to rights and powers not only 
inherent in the States and the people of the States, but 
expressly reserved to them by the constitution itself. This 
may be said with absolute confidence ; that the prevailing, 
if not the unanimous opinion of every member of the Con- 
vention by which the Constitution was framed, concurred 
in the absolute necessity, if freedom was to be preserved 
and the happiness of the people to be promoted, that the 
State should have all powers except such as Irom their 
nature they would not be capable to execute, so as to 
accomplish the safety and prosperity of the whole. 

This was illustrated in all the debates in the Convention. 
The occasion will not justify a reference to more than one 
of them. 
2 



10 

Oliver Ellsworth, second Chief Justice of the United 
States, a member of the Convention, correctly stated " that 
without the co-operation of the States, it would be impos- 
sible to support a Republican government over so great an 
extent of country ; an array could scarcely render it prac- 
ticable." And upon another day he said, "What he 
wanted was domestic happiness. The National Govern- 
ment could not descend to the local objects on which this 
depended. It could only embrace objects of a general 
nature. He turned his eyes, therefore, for the preservation 
of their rights, to the State Governments." — II. Madison 
papers, p. 1014, 

The course of the President and his party leads to the 
reverse of all this. It necessarily results in centralizing 
all powers in the General Government, and thereby making 
it not a Federal, but a Consolidated Government. Not 
only was this alleged in the Convention to be a result 
which could not be produced if the powers of the General 
Government were not overstepped, but in every one of the 
State Conventions by which the Constitution was ratified 
this opinion was also almost universally entertained. 
Some members, however, in several of the State ConventioQS 
expressed apprehensions on the point. This was especially 
the case in the Virginia Convention, and amongst others 
these apprehensions were entertained by Patrick Henry. 
Mr, Madison, who was a member of that Convention, con- 
sidered them as unwarranted. But to quiet all fears, he 
and others agreed that certain amendments should be 
proposed by the first Congress, and this was done on the 
25lh September, 1789, by a proposition to the States that 
tliey should adopt certain amendments, twelve in number. 
Ten were adopted. Two of these are : 

1. "The enumeration ia the Constitution of certain 
rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others 
retained by the people. 

2. "The powers not delegated to the United States by 



11 

the Constitution, nor prohibited b)^ it to the State, are 
reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." 

It is impossible to reconcile the conduct of the President 
and his supporters with these limitations. 

On the contrary, they have been directly violated, and 
these violations would continue beyond the period of 
the next Presidential election if the good sense and 
patriotism of the Democrats in Congress and of many of 
the Republicans had not prevented it. In this enumera- 
tion of the objections to the election of General Grant, I 
do not design to irapugoe his motives. I am willing to 
concede that they are good, and that he believes them to 
be patriotic, but my conviction is, and if I am capable of 
judging, the facts which I have stated demonstrate its 
soundness, that conceding his motives to be good, he does 
not know what the Constitution is, and is entirely igno- 
rant of the principles which should govern a Republic like 
ours. 

His election to the Presidency in '68 was owing to a 
grateful sense of his military services during the war, and 
to the confidence which the people then had a right to feel, 
that, with the aid of an able Cabinet, which it was not 
doubted he would call around him, he would discharge 
the important duties of the office with ability, and in 
strict subordination to the Constitution. 

In this expectation, a large majority of the people who 
voted for him, I believe, are conscious of their disappoint- 
ment, and are unwilling to renew the same trust in him. 
This has been pretty well established by the proceedings at 
the Cincinnati Convention, and by the apparent approval 
of the nomination of Mr. Greely, made there in May last 
and approved by the Democratic Convention in this city 
on the 9th and 10th instant. 

I proceed now to submit to you some observations ia 
relation to Mr. Greeley. 

In the first place, his love of country can not be doubted. 
His ability displayed in the ardaous position of an editor 



12 

of a leading journal for very many years, the thousands 
and hundred of thousands who have been his constant 
readers will readily admit. That he has, at times, incul- 
cated doctrines which many good and able men have 
thought unsound, is no doubt true. But what statesman 
has not ? 

His opinion on the doctrine of protection is now con- 
tested by many men of ability and patriotism. .Whether his 
policy is sound or not is a point upon which even able men 
diiFer. But this is certain, that when Mr. Greeley adopted 
it he had the support of some of the ablest of our statesmen, 
having at their head Henry Clay, a name never mentioned 
in the hearing of Americans without admiration and 
gratitude. If Mr. Greeley has erred, it should be held to 
be some extenuation that he erred in such company. That 
his opinion is honestly entertained and has been maintained 
with great ability must be conceded. But does General 
Grant hold the opposite opinion? Or has he any opinion 
on this nice problem of political economy? If he has one, 
(I've no idea he has, his studies never having run on that 
line,) he certainly never has expressed it, and from his 
enforced reticence, if he was to do so, would nofc be able to 
give his reasons. But why should Mr. Greeley's opinion 
on this point be any objection to his election ? He has 
accepted the nomination he received at Cincinnati, and 
with an engagement to act U[)on the principles there 
announced. One of them is, I quote it, that " recognising 
that there are in our midst honest but irreconcilable dif- 
ferences of opinion with regard to the respective systems 
of protection and ffee trade, we remit the discussion of the 
subject to the people in their Congressional Districts, and 
to the decision of Congress thereon wholly free of Execu- 
tive interference or dictation." 

This gives to the friends of free trade an opportunity of 
satisfying the people that their doctrine is the correct 
one, and that if Congress shall so decide their decision 
will not be disapproved of by Mr. Greeley. 



13 

What more do these gentlemen want in their opposition to 
Mr. Greeley? Did they desire the nomination of an avowed 
Free Trader ? With this view did they wish for the nomi- 
nation of Mr. Adams? And if they had succeeded, and 
Mr. Adams had declared his adhesion to Free Trade, do 
they believe they could have secured his election ? We 
have had experiments enough of presenting to the people 
for the Presidency a candidate whose opinions were not in 
accopdance with those of tlie people generally. And to 
this, and to this alone, was the election of Mr, Lincoln to 
be referred, and the subsequent election of Greneral Grant. 
Whether Free Trade or Protection is to receive the sanc- 
tion of Congress will not depend upon the opinion of the 
President, even if he has one, and is disposed to act upon 
it. He can effect noching except as he may be able to in- 
fluence Congress by his patronage, and this no man fit for 
the office would attempt, because to do so would be a pal- 
pable effort to corrupt that Department. That Mr. 
Greeley would not take such a step is certain, because he 
is honest, and because the platform upou which he agrees 
to stand prohibits it. 

Before the war, and occasionally during its continuance, 
his treatment of the South was believed by many to have been 
unnecessarily harsh. But in this no one seriouslyquestioued 
his motives They were iu no respect personal or other 
than patriotic. The war over, what has been his course? 
From the first m omeut to the present hour he has earnestly 
desired, and has done all in his power to effect it, to re- 
store peace and prosperity to the South. A constant and 
ardent friend of general amnesty and of universal suffrage, 
he cannot but have commended himself to the good oj)in- 
ion of the white and colored citizens of that region. The 
latter, perhaps, are more indebted to him and the Hon. 
Charles Sumner for the rights now secured to them than 
to any other two men in the country. 

His generosity and kind regard for Southern men was 
strongly illustrated by his becoming one of the bail of Mr. 



14 

Jefferson Davis, which terminated his cruelly protracted 
imprisonment. For this step he was denounced by the 
radicals of his party, and particularly by such of them as 
belonj^ to the Union League Club of New York. They 
proposed his expulsion, and who can forget, who has ever 
read it, the proud letter of defiance which he addressed to 
the League on the 23d of May, 1867 ? In that letter he 
quoted extracts from the Tribune to show how decided his 
opinion was that those who had been engaged in the insur- 
rection should be enfranchised, and their estates exempted 
from confiscation. He justified having become security for 
Mr. Davis, and in his letter, among other things, said : 
" Your attempt to base a great, enduring party on the 
hate and wrath necessarily engendered by a bloody, civil 
war, is as though you should plant a colony on an iceberg 
which had somehow drifted into a tropical ocean. [ tell 
you here that out of a life earnestly devoted to the good of 
human kind, your children will select my going to Rich- 
mond and signing that bail bond as the wisest act, and 
will fieel that it did more for freedom and humanity 
than all of you were competent to do, though you had 
lived to the age of Methusaleh." 

You will have thus seen what I think of the present 
political condition of the country. Unless I am greatly 
mistaken, it must give to every unprejudiced, intelligent 
and patriotic man much anxiety and alarm. How is 
this anxiety and alarm to be removed? By removing 
the cause oi it. By refusing a re-election to Gen. Grant, 
to whom in a great measure, if not exclusively, it 
is owing, and by placing in the Presidential office Mr. 
Greeley, whose entire life has exhibited his generous qual- 
ities, his great ability, his pure patriotism, and his unsus- 
pected integrity. To be rich he will accept no presents, 
but would scornfully reject them if offered. He has not 
scores of relatives to provide for out of the public funds, by 
placing them in offices for which they are grossly incompe- 
tent, and, if he had, he would not so place them. He will not 



15 

exert his patronage to influence State elections, or to secure 
a re-election for himself. He will not permit the public 
funds, by means of a tax upon the salaries of his officials, to 
be used for party purposes. He will not suffer his Secreta- 
ries or their subordinates to abandon their posts of duty 
and their attention to the public business, to traverse State 
after State on electioneering visits, so as to bring the influ- 
ence of office in conflict with freedom of elections. He will 
see that our foreign relations are so managed as to give 
honor and not disgrace to the nation. He will not tolerate 
the use of the military for the control of the elective fran- 
chise. He will not trample upon the rights ot the States 
or the people by declaring States to be in rebellion when 
they are not. And my hope is to live to see the day when 
these vital changes will be made ; when all solicitude 
about the fate of our country will be quieted ; when peace 
and prosperity will be secured to the entire nation ; when 
the guaranteed rights of the citizen will be protected, the 
legitimate powers of the States maintained, and the au- 
thority of the General Government exerted only under the 
restrictions of the Constitution. In a word, when the 
Constitution bequeathed to us by our fathers shall in all 
things be observed, and when we will have a President 
intelligent and patriotic enough to keep his official oath 
to "preserve, protect and defend it." 

When all these things shall occur, and not until then, 
will our prosperity and power be renewed, and our coun- 
try become, as it was in former days, the wonder and 
admiration of the world. 

I remain, with great regard. 

Your friend and obedient servant, 

REVERDY JOHNSON. 

To THE Hon. James Brooks, 

New York. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 789 091 4 



